Fields of gray*

 (*A semi-intentional nod to musical virtuoso Bruce Hornsby, who has a song by that name. It's on "Harbor Lights." Give it a listen, it's awesome)

Math is not in the Blob's wheelhouse. Today's Mr. Obvious observation.

It's not in my wheelhouse, or outside in the wheelhouse's yard, or anywhere near the wheelhouse's neighborhood. This is especially true if you throw x's and y's in there, like in algebra or calculus or trigonometry.

Tell you what is in my wheelhouse, though.

One-plus-one equals two. That I can do.

One-plus-one equals two where I am these days with Justin Fields, whose future with the Chicago Bears is indeed a gray area. Will they move on from their third-year former prize? Will they ditch three years of development so they can start over again with Caleb Williams, who's got skills but has yet to take an NFL snap?

I'm leaning toward no. And that's because, yes, I can add one-and-one and get two.

One, the Bears fired Luke Getsy, their offensive coordinator, the guy who was charged with putting Fields in a position to succeed and who largely failed.

One, the Bears also decided to keep Matt Eberflus as their head coach.

Add one plus one, and this brings us to two -- that they're also going to stick with Fields.

Because if you were going to go in a different direction why would you bring in a new OC and keep Eberflus running the show?

If you were going in a different direction, wouldn't you completely erase the whiteboard and start with a blank slate? Bring in a whole new regime to go with your new quarterback and declare a fresh new day?

I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe they'll trade Fields anyway. Maybe both my math and my logic are off-kilter here.

Maybe they're being colored by my own lean, which is Fields has shown enough that you can build around him. You've got two top-ten draft picks, including the No. 1 pick. Take Marvin Harrison Jr. at one to pair with D,J. Moore, use subsequent picks to scoop some qualify offensive linemen, and suddenly Fields becomes a waaay better QB. 

Or so it seems to me. 

I mean, in 13 games this year he threw for 2,560 yards and 16 touchdowns to go with nine picks, completing 61.4 percent of his throws. All were career bests except for the touchdown passes; he threw 17 last year in two more starts.

He also ran for 657 yards and four touchdowns. So in 13 games, with his arm and his legs, he generated 20 touchdowns. And he had one reliable wideout (Moore) to work with..

Now add Harrison on the other side, throw in tight end Cole Kmet (who caught 73 balls for 719 yards and six touchdowns), and, hey, look, how'd Fields get so good all of a sudden?

Now, it's true the Bears could draft Williams at one and still wind up with Harrison, given that so many of the teams immediately behind them need a quarterback, too. But, again, then you're starting over with a guy who, yes, has a dazzling skill set, but who also has demonstrated a disturbing sense of entitlement. 

And, again, why go shopping for a new OC and keep Eberflus around if you were planning on starting over?

I guess we'll find out if the math works after all.

Triple exit

 Nick Saban.

Bill Belichick.

Pete Carroll.

That's a hell of a 24 hours, boys and girls, and, quick, let's run back Pete's "Let's Disappear Marshawn Lynch" play against Bill, just for nostalgia's sake. Those were the days, by golly. Pete calling a pass instead of a run down on the goal line with the Super Bowl in the balance ... Malcolm Butler delivering Bill another ring with the ensuing interception ...  

Ah, memories.

And now, only memories, with Pete being kicked upstairs by the Seahawks, and Bill reportedly stepping down after 24 spangled seasons with the Patriots, and Saban announcing his retirement as the undisputed champeen of college football coaches.

They're all in their 70s now, so I guess this day had to come. But not, you know, the same day.

It leaves us a truckload of legacy to unpack, and let's start with Saban. The man won seven national titles, including six at Alabama, where not even Saint Bear of Bryant eclipses him. In fact, Bear was a warmup act for the real thing, when you get down to brass tacks. He's probably up there on his heavenly perch right now, saying, "Wish I coulda done all that."

Naturally, Saban retiring now invites speculation, as these things will. Did the torn landscape of college football these days -- NIL money dictating all, and the perpetual free agency of the unfettered transfer portal -- hasten his exit? Or, at 72, did he just decide it was time to hand over the whistle?

He has, after all, been coaching football in some capacity for 50 of those 72 years, and that's a good run for anyone. If the migraine headache that is college football in 2023 -- in which you not only have to recruit, but have to constantly keep recruiting the players you already have -- made that run seem even longer, so be it. The man's legacy is as secure as a legacy gets, and he's more than earned his rest.

Carroll and Belichick, meanwhile, are 72 and 71, respectively, so maybe it was time for them, too. Neither is leaving entirely on his own hook, of course; Carroll moving into an advisory capacity is an especially clear indication ownership thought it had wrung all the coaching juice out of him it could.

As for Belichick ...

Let's face it: He hasn't been the same Darth Hoodie genius since Tom Brady went south in search of sunshine. Mac Jones has never become the successor Belichick thought he might be. And as GM, Belichick has been spectacularly bad at finding talent, which culminated in this season's 3-14 collapse.

Nowhere was that collapse more starkly evident than in Belichick's last game, played in a snowstorm in Foxborough. The woeful Jets, whom Belichick has owned for years like  the Roadrunner owns Wile E. Coyote, beat the Patriots 17-3. Jones, benched a few games back for the supremely undistinguished Bailey Zappe, never saw the field. What did see was a Patriots offense that generated just six first downs, 119 total yards and 2.1 yards per play.

From Tom Brady and six Super Bowl rings to Bailey Zappe and six first downs. That's a hell of a tumble off a hell of a cliff.

But the magic held for a good long time, for Belichick and Saban especially. Spygate and Deflategate and Belichick's grumbly public persona notwithstanding, he departs as the most accomplished coach in NFL history, and the man who oversaw its last true dynasty. His 24 seasons in Foxborough have as few equals as Saban's 17 in Tuscaloosa.

(My best Belichick story: On Media Day for the Super Bowl in Indy in 2012, some Boston radio guy kept hollering at Belichick. "Bill! Bill!" he shouted, waving a red plastic tricorn hat at Darth Hoodie. "Put this on!" To which Belichick, with spot-on Belichick-ean disdain, rumbled "No, I'm not gonna do that.")

Carroll, on the other hand, has a more complicated legacy. He steps away with a Super Bowl ring from 2014, but a lot of smart guys think he ran off Russell Wilson, and even more smart guys think he blew that aforementioned Super Bowl to Belichick. It's been pretty beige since the former, and even more beige since the latter.

And yet ...

And yet, Carroll, Saban and Belichick. All in the same 24 hours.

Exit, Stage Right never saw a more spotlit day.

Lost Tuesday

 Well, I know what I'm going to do, on this morning after. I'm going to fire up "Hoosiers" again to reassure myself Indiana is still The Basketball State.

Because last night it wasn't.

First there was No. 1 Purdue, journeying out to Nebraska and getting whupped from stem to stern by a football school. Which apparently is now a basketball school because the Cornhuskers are 13-3 now and have one of the best guards in the Big Ten in Keisei Tominaga, who dropped 19 on the Boilermakers in a 16-point win.

Purdue got way behind, got back within one, fell back again, and got close again. Then the Boilers got outscored 20-4 down the stretch because Nebraska shot a ridiculous 60.9 percent from the 3-point arc (14-of-23), and also because Zach Edey and Co. didn't dominate the glass like they should have, outrebounding the Nebraskas just 34-30.

The Blob's take on this?

Nebraska probably isn't going to shoot 70 percent from the arc again -- heck, who will? -- so chalk this one up to Purdue losing to a rare phenomenon. Like, you know,  Halley's Comet beats the Boilers or something.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast ...

Yikes, Indiana. Just yikes.

The Hoosiers reprised their own Nebraska trip with a listless 66-57 loss to a supremely underwhelming Rutgers team. Again the Indiana guards were trash; the Hoosiers turned it over 18 times, which means between the Nebraska loss and this one they kicked away the Magic Orange Sphere a mind-boggling 37 times. Thirty ... seven ... times.

Not content with that bit of basketball vandalism, they also shot horribly, missing 19 of their 26 3-point attempts (26.9 percent) and 35 of their 58 shots overall (39.7). Oh, and point guard Xavier Johnson, Indiana's sixth-year alleged floor leader, got kicked out of the game for groin-shotting a Rutgers player -- but not before he'd scored just two points, dished just two assists and turned it over five times in 24 minutes.

The cherry on top was head coach Mike Woodson killing another Indiana lead with that stupid hockey-line-change mass substitution thing, then getting all defensive about it in the postgame.

"I'm not going to sit here and answer that question when it comes to the fans -- or you," Woodson said to a reporter who asked about it.

Wonderful.

The upshot of all this is some people are beginning to whisper the dread words "Archie Miller" about Woodson's regime. Indiana fans have always been a touch divorced from reality ("We won our last national title a thousand years ago, so we're an ELITE program!"), which is not good news for Woodson. Putting a showing like last night's out there is only going to make them louder and more insistent that, like everyone who's come after Bob Knight, he's just not That Guy.

In the meantime, I've got "Hoosiers" to console me.

I mean, Jimmy Chitwood never hit a guy in the nuts. So there's that.

So now what?

 Finally, then, Blake Corum battered his way into the end zone one last time, and the clock ran down, and here were your Michigan Wolverines, champions of college football and situational ethics. They beat Washington 34-13, and it wasn't that close. And nary a discouraging word was heard.

Lots of revisionist history, though.

Because there was Jim Harbaugh, fresh off two stretches in the clink, saying none of that bothered his Wolverines because "we were innocent and stood tall and strong because we knew we were innocent." Which sounded a trifle odd coming from a guy who was suspended half the season for, I don't know, being innocent?

In any case, Michigan woulda won without its coach being shady, and to the victors go both the spoils and the ability to shape the historical narrative. After all, that the Wolverines were the best team in college football this season, with or without shenanigans, is beyond dispute. Last night closed all arguments otherwise.

Offensively, Corum ran for 134 yards and two scores and Donovan Edwards for 104 and two -- Edwards' sixes coming on his first two touches. The Wolverines ground meat to the tune of 303 rushing yards.

And defensively?

The Wolverines never really stopped Michael Penix Jr., but they slowed him to what passed for a crawl. The defensive front exerted enough pressure to make him uncomfortable and disrupt his rhythm, and the Michigan D-backs took away the deep ball and forced Penix to play dink-and-dunk. He wound up with 255 passing yards, but Michigan picked him twice and the Huskies averaged just 9.4 yards per completion.

Ultimately, it was decided where a lot of folks suspected it might be, up front. And Michigan owned up front on both sides of the ball. Telling stat of the night, perhaps: The Wolverines averaged 8.0 yards per carry on the ground; Washington, 2.3.

And now the question becomes, where do the Wolverines go from here?

Or, more specifically, where does Harbaugh go?

He wasn't saying last night -- actually got annoyed when asked, and it was hard to blame him -- but if you're laying money down, lay it on three letters: N, F and L. He has, after all, done what he came to Michigan to do. And, thanks in part to how he did it, the NCAA axe is now hovering over the program.

If the Bears or the Commanders or the Chargers or whoever comes calling, what reason would Harbaugh have for not answering now?

Of course, it would be an asshat thing to do, leaving Michigan to hold his bag. But again, Harbaugh has already shown how capable he is of asshattery. And it wouldn't be the first time a successful coach fled the building just as the flames were spreading.

Shoot. It's practically a tradition for some of them.

So, yeah, hoisting the Big Trophy likely will be the last thing Harbaugh hoists in Ann Arbor, except for his furniture into a moving van. But at least the Wolverines will always have last night. 

Future stretch in the Graybar Hotel or not.

The Prediction

 Faithful Blobophiles know this is a certified history nerd zone, and has been from way back. It's not my fault. My dad raised me right, or something.

Anyway, the history nerd in me doesn't necessarily want to happen what I think is going to happen in Houston tonight, but if it does, history will prevail. That's because I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict Michigan's defense will beat Michael Penix Jr.'s offense in the College Football Playoff title game.

And if that happens?

If that happens, it will be the first time in history a coach who was suspended half the season for multiple shenanigans will raise the Big Crystal Football.

I'm talking of course about Jim Harbaugh, liar and rules flouter, who's put together a team that didn't require any lying or rules flouting to get where it is. The lying and rules flouting were just for funsies, apparently.

If Harbaugh's Michigan Wolverines win, however, it will say nothing good about college football in the year of our Lord 2023, except that cheaters do indeed sometimes prosper. The Michigan team will have earned its title, but propriety will take the L.

That has a lot of people rooting hard for Penix and Washington, and, listen, it's not like it couldn't happen. If Penix hasn't faced a defense like Michigan's, it's equally true Michigan hasn't faced anyone like Penix. Not even remotely.

Also, Washington's defense is sneaky stout, and it's facing a team that's not quite one-dimensional but lives just down the street from it. No one yet has been able to stop the Wolverines' mashing run game, but if the Huskies can slow it down a bit, then it becomes Penix vs. J.J. McCarthy. And we all know who wins that.

So ... don't be surprised if Washington, chronically undervalued all season, pulls off the upset. But the Blob still leans toward the cheaters prospering.

Call it Michigan 31, Washington 29. Something like that.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 18

 And now the final edition for this season of The NFL In So Many Words, the never-quit, play-to-the-final-second Blob feature of which critics have said "Jeebus! Quit already!", and also "Come on! You don't need one more! Put your substitute Blob in and call it a day!":

1. "Yay! We won our 12th game of the season!" (Lions fans)

2. "Crap! Why was our regular tight end playing in a meaningless game?" (Also Lions fans, after Sam LaPorta went out with a knee injury)

3. "You want me gone? Fine, I'm gone. But first, watch me lose to the Jets at home, you ungrateful turds!" (Bill Belichick, after the Patriots mustered just six first downs and 119 total yards in, yes, losing to the Jets at home)

4. "Hey, look, we done got us another quarterback!" (Packers fans, watching Jordan Love)

5. "Hey, look, we done got us another quarterback we're gonna give up on so we can draft yet another quarterback we'll give up on!"  (Bears fans)

6. "And how come that never happens to the Packers, those lucky cheese-eating s***?" (Also Bears fan)

7. In other news the Eagles lost by 17 to the sad-sack Giants, their fifth loss in their last six games after starting the season 10-0.

8. "Well, at least we only have to watch these guys one more time." (Eagles fans anticipating the expected loss to the Buccaneers next week in their wild-card game)

9. This just in: Buccaneers 9, Panthers 0. On three field goals.

10. "Boy, you just can't beat NFL football for thrills and excitement!" (America, sarcastically)

 

Almost there

 Possibly overheard on the Indianapolis sideline last night with 1:06 remaining and the Colts at fourth-and-one on the Houston Texans' 15 ...

"I know! Let's throw a pass to a backup running back! They'll never see THAT coming!"

"What's that, Jonathan? Oh, no, that's OK. You need a break. Take a load off, son."

"Yes, that's right, Gardner. It's fourth-and-one and we're gonna throw. What do you mean we should go with a robust set and run a quarterback sneak? That's just dumb."

And of course ...

"Dammit! And it was such a good play we called!"

 But Gardner Minshew's pass was a touch behind backup running back Tyler Goodson, and he dropped it, and the Texans took over on downs. And there was your season, Horsie Nation.

Houston 23, Indy 19. The Texans finish 10-7 and make the playoffs; the Colts finish 9-8 and don't. And if all of Indianapolis and probably America will wonder why Tyler Goodson was in the game down at the end and Jonathan Taylor wasn't ... well, if it was gonna end, it probably had to end with something weird like that.

The season,  after all, was weird in its own way, what with the Colts losing prize rookie Anthony Richardson five games in, and Taylor sideline for a stretch and the Shaq Leonard era ending with such shocking suddenness. Oh, and injuries whittling the defensive backfield down to nothing ... and the Colts , beating the Ravens on the road and losing by 19 to the Falcons ... and Minshew being Minshew -- i.e., a real live NFL quarterback one week, and what-the-hell-was-that the next.

But you know the weirdest thing?

Horsie Nation grinding its teeth to dust at the end last night, because the Colts won only nine games and not the 10th they needed  to win.

And, sure, absolutely, that last play will forever be a head-scratcher, and rightly leaves everyone thinking that once again the Colts blew it. Statistics are for losers, we all know that, but it's hard to fathom how the Colts lost a game in which they outgained the Texans 360-306, and had five more first downs (21-16), and threw Taylor at Houston 30 times for 188 yards. And averaged 6.1 yards per rush and 5.8 yards per play.

The answer is they didn't do any of that when it mattered most, right down to the curious final snap. The Colts were 0-for-3 in the red zone. They were 1-for-11 on third down and 0-for-1 on fourth down. And the defense sacked C.J. Stroud just twice and failed to turn over the Texans a single time.

Sooo ... 9-8 instead of 10-7. Which, drawing back to take the longer view, is hella encouraging given what it could have been, and maybe even should have been.

Back in August, after all, the prevailing wisdom that the Colts were going to suck like a Hoover upright. More than a few of the supposed wise guys were saying they'd be lucky to win five games. Several of those wise guys (including this one) were predicting the Colts would finish 4-13.

And then, when Richardson went down and Shaq Leonard returned from injury a shadow of his former self ...

Well. Four wins looked optimistic.

Until it didn't.

Until, that is, Zaire Franklin emerged as Leonard 2.0, and Minshew turned out to be more than serviceable, and, wait, what? Nine wins and a shot at the playoffs down to the last offensive snap of the season?

The immediate past might sting. But tell me the future doesn't look a whole lot brighter than it did in August, before we found out Shane Steichen could coach and the Colts looked like an actual football team with some actual thought behind it.

And how long has it been since we saw that?